Why Gym Jordan should avoid fights over what's 'un-American'
Republican Rep. Gym Jordan has earned a reputation as a highly controversial politician, though I was a little surprised to see him cause a stir this week with a short tweet.
At a time when the delta variant's summer surge has renewed the nation's divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Gym Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing vaccination do not reflect what it means to be American. "Vaccine mandates are un-American," Jordan tweeted.
At this point, we could point to the American tradition and note that George Washington, among others, embraced mandatory inoculations. Indeed, by some measures, the United States might very well have lost the Revolutionary War were it not for a policy that Jordan apparently considers "un-American."
We could also point to many examples throughout American history in which key societal institutions including public schools and the U.S. military embraced vaccine mandates as a matter of course. Ohio State required vaccinations for students while Jordan was a coach there, and he didn't seem to care at the time.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/maddow-blog-why-jim-jordan-should-avoid-fights-over-whats-un-american/ar-AAOe1Th
dchill
(38,321 posts)... of what Gym thinks are American.
LetMyPeopleVote
(143,999 posts)I love history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it
Link to tweet
Thats why Washington eventually made the bold decision to inoculate all American troops who had never been sickened with smallpox at a time when inoculation was a crude and often deadly process. His gamble paid off. The measure staved off smallpox long enough to win a years-long fight with the British. In the process, Washington pulled off the first massive, state-funded immunization campaign in American history......
By the following winter, Washington and his troops were camped in Morristown, New Jersey, where the threat of smallpox was as dire as ever. Americas stoic general waffled back and forth on whether to inoculate or not, even making the mass inoculation order and then rescinding it. Finally, on February 5, 1777, he made the call in a letter to John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress.
The small pox has made such Head in every Quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro the whole Army in the natural way. I have therefore determined, not only to innoculate all the Troops now here, that have not had it, but shall order Docr. Shippen to innoculate the Recruits as fast as they come in to Philadelphia.
Fenn says that inoculating all troops without natural smallpox immunity was a daunting task. First, medical personnel had to examine each individual to determine if they had contracted the disease in the past, then they conducted the risky variolation procedure, followed by a month-long recovery process attended by teams of nurses.
Meanwhile, this entire processthe first of its kind and scalehad to be conducted in total secrecy. If the British caught wind that large numbers of American soldiers were laid up in bed with smallpox, it could be the end.